Early New England Words

Abstract

HE American colonists were almost as prolific in diaries as in ser1 mons. I know of about 2500 diaries written before l800.1 In New England, this type of journalism was practised by the nearly-illiterate almost as much as by the cultured colonists. It would seem that when a colonist was called out to a scouting expedition or journey or to a scrap with the Indians or French, he thought first not of his arms but of his writing materials. So early did the habit of journalism begin in this country. These diaries constitute an excellent body of varied writing, most of it strongly colloquial. It is admirable material for the study of the layers of early American speech and of the development of the English language in the New World, as well as of general English usage. In the course of surveying colonial diaries for an anthology and historical account of them, I made notes of various linguistic usages which seemed to be interesting in diaries written in New England before 1750. When the lexicographical notes were checked with the Oxford English Dictionary, the English Dialect Dictionary and the Dictionary of American English scx far as it has been published, there proved to be a fair number which were interesting because they either were unrecorded in the dictionaries, or were early usages or late usages, or early examples of Americanisms. The most generally interesting of these are listed below. To them I have appended brief notes on some slang terms and colloquialisms which I found in the same diaries; and although these terms are of no great value to lexicography, they have yet some interest as being among the earliest slang terms used in America. I do not imagine that I gathered more than a small proportion of the lexicographical material in the diaries; and the following list does not even exhaust my own notes, as I have omitted many words commonly used in English dialects. The purpose o£ this paper is little more than to indicate the linguistic value of the colonial diaries and to urge their further and more thorough exploitation.